catabolism

Note: The term was promulgated, if not initiated, by the British physiologist Walter Holbrook Gaskell (1847-1914) in the article "On the structure, distribution and function of the nerves which innervate the visceral and vascular systems," Journal of Physiology, vol. 7, issue 1 (January, 1886), p. 46: "When a tissue such as a muscle is said to be at rest we know that in reality a continual interchange of material or metabolism is all the time taking place, the condition of equilibrium which we denote by the term rest being brought about by the counterbalancing of the two opposite processes of constructive and destructive metabolism, or as Hering has called them of assimilation and dissimilation. In other words metabolism includes the two opposite processes of destruction and construction, or as they may be called of katabolism and anabolism …We can therefore with justice speak of the motor nerve of a muscle as the katabolic nerve of that tissue …."